This is a closeup of a beef daube. Note the orange, olives and capers.

Here’s how it happens, when you’ve invited 10 people for dinner. You make a beef daube. That way, you’re done cooking before anyone arrives, and you even have time to put on a clean shirt.

The trick to a successful daube is to start early. As in, a couple of days early. For whatever mystical reason, stew that’s been cooked, then cooled, then rewarmed again takes on an otherwise unattainable richness of flavor that’s impossible to cheat. This doesn’t mean the recipe is more difficult, it just means you have to start a bit earlier.Read more…

It’s going to be a chilly weekend here in Denver. For a certain kind of person (me) this is good news: It means I can putter around the kitchen for a few hours and not feel like I’m burning sunshine.

An idea: Double this slow, sultry, long-cooking recipe from Italian cooking guru Marcella Hazan and eat half on Saturday night. Reheat the leftovers on Sunday — you’ll be delighted by how much the flavor develops after 24 hours in the fridge.